DaveWC

By all means impose your standards on yourself. When it comes to imposing on others, you'll get no traction.

dalava

What you are missing here is that no one can take away your inalienable rights endowed by our creator, by definition. It's when you exercise these rights, you, as one living in a social environment, also have the responsibility of not taking away those of others. That's what "unfettered" means.

series1811

Anyone else notice that the people who protest cycling and running on roadways are generally in dire need of it themselves? Makes me wonder how much of their objection is driven by self loathing of their poor health because some guy getting exercise hurts their feelings.

ColaJacket

Conan O'Brien might be more likely to take up the cause.



You can tell by looking at the ladies that they don't bicycle. I partially agree that communities should get what they want, except when it is a safety issue. Since this is a safety issue, the issue should be settled on scientific data.

GH

Smokehouse

Holy crap!!! Look at that head-tube! I know Conan is one tall fella, but that thing is huge. I wonder how much that effects handling...

ColaJacket

Those women were using so many ad hominem and strawman arguements that you would have thought they were on the 41 forum.

GH

furiousferret

There are good arguments for not inducing bike lanes, I doubt theirs is one. Aren't there studies that an increase in bike lane / bike friendly areas increases property values?

One good case against bike lanes; our neighboring city got a grant an are repaving 3 streets that run parallel. In addition to all 3 having bike lanes, 2 of the roads will lose driving lanes. These are very busy roads, the kind that cyclists get creamed on. It would be in cyclists better interest to keep 2 roads with 4 lanes, and have one with a bike lane and excessive stop lights to incentivize cars to use the other 2 roads.

dalava

Lest we all allow scientific data interfere with someone's "God given rights"

ColaJacket

Well seeing how there is a separation of church and state, I couldn't care less about somebody's "God given rights"

I do care about their Constitutional Rights.

Like I said in another post, they were using so many ad hominem and strawman arguements that you would have thought they were debating on the 41 forum. The only thing they didn't do was invoke Godwin's Law, and I'm surprised they didn't say something to invoke it (e.g. white line nazis).

GH

banerjek

Everyone has a right to their feelings, including nut jobs. I'm sorry, but those arguments were simply ridiculous.

That someone feels that paint stripes for bikes cause pollution, are an intolerable eyesore, etc. might be their reality, but that does not make it a fact nor does it make it something that has to be taken as seriously as a reasonable argument. There are people who simply have nothing better to do than stew in their own juices and come up with all kinds of ways to force the world to be as they want. I was on a condo board for a few years, and you see a lot of this. 95% of the residents are quite reasonable, but yahoos like this cause constant problems for the simple reason that aside from being nutty, they don't work with others -- they simply complain nonstop as a way of forcing their will on the rest.

Where bike lanes do and do not belong is something that should be up for debate. The screwball arguments brought up in that clip are a sideshow that have nothing to do with that debate.

Shimagnolo

Exactly! I have a good friend who sat on the HOA board of one of the largest HOA communities in CO. He has a lot of interesting stories!

Dave Cutter

Yeah. Can you just imagine explaining to say.... the American founding fathers.... that someday some people would find having horses in New York City an intolerable situation. Just imagine what they would think of a rant like that. That the major of one of the grandest cities in the world might want to ban horses from the streets. That some might believe a horse pulling a carriage could be inhumane treatment to the animal... and a traffic hazard. It sounds like a joke.

But it isn't a joke. And some saw this happening more than a decade ago. Others made fun...

Bicycles are a mature technology. The popularity of the bicycle has had many ups and downs. Most people expect cycling popularity to fall... and then rise again in a few years. A few have predicted that the push by some to force a cycling culture on an unaccepting public would have a backlash.

Dave Cutter

Hilarious!

banerjek

Completely different situations. The founding fathers had no way of knowing or imagining what transportation would be like a couple hundred years later. No one today can see 200 years into the future either.

The arguments of people like this have nothing to do with vision or logic for that matter. Their goal is to force their view on everyone else. There are also cyclists who do that, but their numbers are tiny -- just as the number of yahoos like the people in the film are tiny.

If the people who expect bicycles to suddenly stop being ridden are right (even though the prediction seems based more on hopes than on any particular reason), the bike lanes can be repurposed. In the meantime, one of our bridges that has a bike counter on it logs an average of 6,000 bicycles per day. Closing that would not provide enough more space for cars nor widen the roads at the other end of the bridge, and the hopelessly slow traffic would become even worse. Out here, the bike haters also dislike public transit. So they could shut down the rail line which moves 1/3 of commuters during rush hour along our two busiest corridors (i.e. traffic would increase 50% on highways that are already like parking lots). Speaking of which, they would find that the already hopeless parking situation would be that much worse.

But I digress. Main point is not all opinions need to be taken seriously. People like the ones in the video should be regarded as seriously as those who believe the dinosaurs were wiped out in the great flood because there wasn't enough space on the Ark.

Dave Cutter

You're ether an impressive psychic... or very close to one of those ladies. Or your projecting..... hummmm

Wow!!! One paragraph and all these buzz words for the 90's! I am impressed. I'll bet your great at trivia games. But your right. No one knows what's going to happen in 200 years. But 2, 10 or 20 years isn't such a stretch. And looking backwards to many of the old ideas I've read expressed here... that's a piece of cake.

The ONLY reason anyone cares what a bunch of "social medic organized" mature women care about bicycle lanes... is because they are in opposition to what you want. AND they WON. They won in one little evening.

jon c. 

While it is certainly true that the founding fathers might well have had difficulty predicting the issues we'd be arguing about today, I'm not sure how this relates to the case at hand. Although I suspect they would have been a bit taken aback at the thought that females would have such a public voice. But times have changed and regardless of the questionable merit of some of these arguments, no one would suggest that these citizens be disallowed from making them. Then as now, entering the public square to voice an opinion does constitute an invitation to ridicule. Some things haven't changed.

DBrown9383

this!

PepeM

Quality thread. BF's debate team would be world class.

banerjek

My projecting? (BTW, I'm making fun of your grammar just in case you didn't pick that up).

Are you seriously trying to suggest there is anything other than total nonsense in what they said?

Hardly. The process people use to arrive at their conclusions is important whether you win or lose. Otherwise, you may as well just decide things at random. These people are truly idiots. I'm guessing you might agree with people who buy into that dinosaurs perishing in the flood thing.

And BTW, I never lived in a place that had bike lanes in my life until the past three years and still don't ride in them except when they are faster than traffic. Don't expect me to respond to anything else you say. I can't believe I've wasted this much time with you and I enjoy participating in some pretty dumb discussions. You're incredible even for the 41.

Shimagnolo

BTW There is a psychiatric definition for what you described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Querulant

Dave Cutter

Yes. And thank you so VERY much!!!! It is well known on the Interweb.... that when baffled by logic and reasoning... attack the grammar and spelling. You've paid me a high compliment! Thanks again.

I couldn't care less about what they said! But I support/defend their right to say it. And... I am old enough, and have seen enough, to know when to pay attention and learn something. Others here are too busy ridiculing... to see what happened.

I got that impression.

BillyD

Pointless bickering makes it easy for me.

Adios!